the heart and the mind & finding business success

“The philosophy behind much advertising is based on old observation that every man is really two men — the man he is and the man he wants to be.”

~

William Feather

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Well.

I admit. I am constantly surprised that business people, and communications people in general, lose sight of what is important in positioning their business and what they want to say. This thought pertains business to business as well as consumer and analytics driven tracking as well as, well, suffice it to say – everything.

It starts off well.

More often than not conversations begin with ‘what makes us different/distinct’ … good solid practical meaningful “Hey. I got something that can actually provide some value to someone.”

It ends up usually not so well.

More often than not it ends with some version of “here is what we need to say <about us and ‘it’>.”

Let me be clear. That is important. It has to be. Ultimately you need to say something to people to distinguish your space in people’s minds and inevitably make a sale or create some engagement/purchase. You have to offer some practical value to match the dollars forked over. But far far too often the conversation gets dragged down into the sinkhole of practicality. And this seems to happen far far too quickly <like right at the beginning>.

It is like everyone gets stuck on the rational mind aspects. And, frankly, it is a pretty easy place to get stuck. Rational is rational and when it comes to ‘wallet type’ discussions even some fairly experienced behavioral thinking business people get sucked into this back hole of practicality. And, yet, even as this black hole seems to start sucking the entire galaxy of collective thinking in the room, in the back of everyone’s mind they know that if somehow, someway they could connect their business proposition to a potential buyer’s heart, not just their mind, it is better for the business <they may not be able to articulate the exact whys of why it is better … but most business people know in their gut that a ‘heart connection’ is meaningful>.

But this is almost exactly where this whole slippery slope of mediocrity and practicality discussion seems to veer off into the absurdity which actually encourages business people to sat in the practicality zone.

The next often incredibly absurd conversation as everyone ponders how the business can reach into people’s hearts and not just their minds relates to ‘emotional connection.’ As in “we need to get people emotionally engaged if we want to differentiate in the long term.” This is business people’s version of James’ “win the heart and the mind will follow.”

Absurdly, from that point on the conversations inevitably get steered into some practical discussion of how to get people emotionally involved <as if we could pragmatically convince someone to be emotionally involved>.

That looks crazy even as I write it.

Yes. Practicality and rational has a role. In fact its role is essential to the greater need. The rational enables the “heart” possibilities.

But. It is the ‘heart’ aspects which shift success from “we sell something” to “people covet/want our something.”

Yet. Most business people are pretty rationale so they approach emotional connection, uhm, rationally. Words come out of some sage manager like “what can we do to create this emotional connection?” I always want to lean forward and say “well, remember that girl in high school you liked and decided you were going to get her to like you? … how did that work out for you?”

You cannot actively pursue getting someone to like you. you cannot actively, rationally, build an ‘emotional connection.’ You can truly only control you, your business, your product, your organizational culture and the character which embodies all of that. Once you believe in that and it is truth and not something another sage manager has crafted to be in some poster that appears in the cafeteria> you are on your way to … well … start dating potential users & buyers.

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“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it. “

Audre Lorde

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The other aspect of this emotional connection discussion that I seem to always be banging my head against the wall is the … well … let’s call it the aspirational aspect. You can emotionally connect with another person because they are a soul mate … or … you can connect because you see a better version of you with & within them <I am sure there are other ways but let me stick with these two>.

I love the latter in building businesses. By thinking about it, by pursuing it, a business will inevitably find themselves actually aspiring to consistently ‘be it’ day in and day out. In other words … if I find myself actually tapping into ‘the person who I want to be’ aspect of potential users & buyers I tend to kind of feel like I <the business> has some responsibility to actually BE a better version for thebetterment of self <and customers benefit in my self belief>. The business positioning actually feeds the business as well as feeds the business success.

Regardless.

While I babbled about some different dimensions of this discussion inevitably a successful business has to at least think about three aspects of their business:

the aspirational component: how am I making lives better or people better

the emotional component: day in and day out what emotional benefit do I offer <this is like the character or personality to which people will gravitate>

the rational component: day in and day out what functional benefit do I offer <what do I actually do>

You gotta discuss all three. Aspirational keeps the horizon in perspective, the emotional insures you stay true to thineself and the rational insures you keep everyone’s eye on the ‘how we make our money’ ball.

Anyway.

I speak with lots and lots of business people. And this discussion remains one of the most consistently discussed and one of the most consistently mishandled aspects of creating a successful business.

I learned a long long time ago in business it is all about aligning “head, heart & wallet.” That doesn’t mean it is easy … but it is what it is with regard to business success.